Does Roku suck? (part 2)

I purchased my roku 2 from Amazon, thank God, because it;s going back tomorrow... I spent an entire day trying to get it to function... The first hour or so I used the manual(joke) and the rest of the day I used live chat (a bigger joke)... The tech. that I first worked near 2 hours with, helped me reset both the unit and the remote numerous times and at least got me logged in and established an account. When he attempted to help me with the sound, we changed HDMI cables and ports to no avail and simply disconnected during this process. After waiting for over 20 minutes I got a second technician who could not understand the sound problem and wanted me to repeat all the things that I had done for the first. At this point my remote started to fail or go to screen saver mode every 5 or 10 minutes. So after about 5 reboots, I asked if I could control the screen saver feature to save rebooting so much. He said absolutely not. I remarked that I would be better off getting netflix on the xBox 360 and he hung up. My third tech.tried to help me get the remote to function for more than one or two functions, because by now the remote would work for a maximum of two functions before requiring a reboot. He had me use the paper clip to reset the unit and I then was required to re-enter all of the router info which the remote would not allow. The best I got was the keyboard screen but could not go any further... Their Tech.gave up at this point and said that an advanced technician would handle it by phone. I agreed and after two hours (at this point I had 7 hours invested)he called me and his command of the English language was so poor that I gave up and told him to forget it, that I would return the unit on Monday... If you guys ever get this unit perfected I may try again, but not now...

Sigh, I'm getting really tired of this shit with needing 10 different boxes to access all the different content portals.

An HTPC does all of these things. You could just spend the money and get one. No TV type device is going to be perfect. It's a rather difficult market with a lot of competition, few barriers to entry and it's hard to keep a fully updated device.

And with an HTPC you get only 720P HD titles (and not every HD title is available on the PC) and no surround sound. No thanks.

I've had my Roku XDS for about 18 months, runs great. Every once in awhile, Netflix will get a little flaky, but that may have something to do with me having almost 400 titles in my queue. Whenever netflix acts up, I unplug the Roku for about 30 seconds, replug and it works great for at least a couple of months. I blame that more on netflix than the roku since every other feature works fine. Looks like you just got a bum one. Order a replacement.

While we're talking about Roku boxes... I've been considering getting one since I feel guilty about the power draw of using an old PS3 for Netflix. Are there any good iPad apps for controlling it? One thing that would be nice would be controlling music streaming without having to turn the TV on.

While we're talking about Roku boxes... I've been considering getting one since I feel guilty about the power draw of using an old PS3 for Netflix. Are there any good iPad apps for controlling it? One thing that would be nice would be controlling music streaming without having to turn the TV on.

Roku does have an official iPhone app that should work on the iPad. Just need to be on the same wifi network as the Roku. It's basically the layout of the Roku remote - nothing else. It's been very handy when the batteries in the remote have died. But it's kind of wonky and slow.

There are a couple of other Roku apps by third-parties. I haven't tried any of them.

Theoretically, it is possible to control your music library via Roku using the Plex app (Plex server installed on the Mac/PC) for the Roku. I find Plex to be a hot mess in terms of actual usability/user friendliness. It's a great concept and I've tried to love it (even pre-Roku). But it makes me want to punch bunnies in terms of practical use. But I seem to be in the minority on that viewpoint.

I have a Logitech Harmony so replicating just the remote isn't terribly interesting. Now that I think about it, I guess the only real iPad integration I would be looking for would be to control music streaming. Plex doesn't look too promising for this currently.

There's an iPad/iPhone remote called Rowmote which can control a number of programs on your Mac, including iTunes.

The app is updated periodically (and the server). It also works over wifi, but it really works over wifi. No stuttering/lag after button presses. Plus several control options:

Quote:

Rowmote Pro adds a wireless multitouch touchpad and keyboard - complete with landscape mode, two finger scrolling and right clicking, dragging, three and four finger gestures, accented / extended character support, and more - to the clean and powerful remote control of Rowmote! Rowmote Pro replaces the need for a separate mouse & keyboard to fully control your Mac.

I've been using it for about a year and have had no issues with it. I prefer using it from the iPad - mainly because it has a larger keyboard and touchpad than the iPhone/iPod Touch version.

I think I've had one of each generation. The first one is still in use at someone else's house and going strong.

The second gen. unit is in use in my exercise room it works fine but the wireless radio seems to have crapped out. I had a very hard time with Roku customer support even getting my questions understood. I did eventually get contacted by someone from the engineering department so that was good even though it didn't fix the problem. It works fine on an ethernet connection now.

The 3rd gen HD model is my primary living room unit. It works more or less perfectly, occasionally I do have problems with the Netflix channel but it never requires more than power down.

Overall they have been pretty solid devices and I don't have much room to complain other than my miserable support experience.

I have 2 Roku XSes: one connected via HDMI only (for audio and video), and one connected via HDMI for video + analog audio. Both work perfectly, and have since day 1. Return it and get a replacement. Perhaps you got a bad unit. If that one also doesn't work, I'd be inclined to blame the remote actuator.

I've tried the Plex app on the Roku (with Plex server on the Mini). IMHO, it's a freaking mess. Navigation is slightly better but noticeably slower than Plex on the Mac. But getting any video to play that doesn't become pixellated/grainy or doesn't stutter is nearly impossible.

I suppose it's possible that the Plex server was still crunching bits or something, even though I waited two hours before trying anything.

It's also possible that my setup may have caused issues - Roku and Mini are hardwired on the same network via an unmanaged switch.

I should give it another try, just to see if it's any better. But Plex has never struck me as being particularly user-friendly, if your primary use is just to flop down and watch something without endless fiddling and/or waiting for things to happen.

I suppose one could make the argument that "it's not bad for their first channel on Roku". But I hate that argument. Roku has been out for a while. Plex has been out for a while. Both have survived without the other. So there was no hurry to get it out when they could have spent more time to get integration/playback working better the first time.

I'm not slamming them (too hard). I like the idea of access to my Apple media library from within Roku - it's easy and nice in concept. But they could have waited until it was a better experience for the end user.

They also had the option of releasing it as a "private" channel on Roku before making it an official channel. Might have given them more time to work things out and get user feedback before making it "official".

IIRC the Roku is fairly limited in what it can play natively anyway, so probably most people's videos would require transcoding regardless.

Yeah, my memory it that it was originally designed to simply be a Netflix box. Netflix came to them and said they wanted them to make a licensed set top box for streaming, but shortly before they were done Netflix changed course and decided that rather than have one box, they'd create a set of APIs so that it'd be easy for manufacturers to design Netflix apps for just about anything that can connect to the internet (which seems to have been the right call). Roku took what they'd designed and bolted on the ability to add non-Netflix channels.

The Roku HD I got my mom is used only for Netflix streaming, so it's fulfilling the original design purpose. At that, it's been fabulously successful - it and a Harmony remote are just about the only pieces of technology she has no problem using (after I set both up, of course).

Can I ask a simple question? What do you get exactly with a Roku box? I go to their website and they mention some 400+ "channels" - but more information is oddly lacking. They're not streaming live TV ---are they? Do the "channels" have a fee? I can't, for instance, watch HBO without having a cable sub right?

If the Roku is just rebroadcasting internet videos and Netflix, what advantage does it give me over my PS3 besides power draw?

Videos that I had ripped would play. With occasional heavy pixellation and, a couple of times, a complete wash out of color.

It would not play movies that I had purchased from iTunes.

In terms of music, it picked up a lot of the album covers, but also missed a lot - especially music purchased from iTunes.

Playback of music is without any issue, except: ifnyou play a song then go back into your library, the song stops playing. Expected behavior in a video, but not in an audio product.

There are two different music apps (same for video) that have different features/options, but seem pretty worthless. The one music app that has a playlists option doesn't actually seem to support playlists that are in iTunes. Instead, I get a random carouselmof selections from the music library. And, when I select one to play, it kicks me out of the Plex app altogether.

Roku is nice,mbut I have no idea what the hell Plex was thinking. IMHO, it needed a lot more exposure as a private channel, which might have helped it be less of a clusterfuck.

The music is primarily recent purchases from iTunes that includes music from the 1920s through last year. Not seeing any common thread about the album art not showing up. There were albums I ripped and added the album art in iTunes, and all of that shows up in Plex. Seems to be more recent music (Benassi Bros. Rihanna) but not exclusively so.

Oh I missed that the music comment was about album covers, I was thinking some of your music wasn't showing up at all (which I figured might be another DRM issue). No idea about the album covers. It's possible some of them are stored in iTunes' database rather than in the files or directory, or maybe there's some issue with Plex picking up album art I don't know.